Beat Studies 2.0

Where Atlanta Music Production and Journalism Come Together

Beat Studies is an Atlanta-based music collective and online journal that that acclaims—above all—craftsmanship, integrity and community. Our purpose is to make a genuine contribution to humanity; to change people’s lives through music and tell the stories behind those who make it.

We seek and share knowledge from our world class music community through a social network of conversation and collaboration. We are a group of like-minded people working together to help each other. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Beat Studies’ approach to music journalism is locally driven with a strong emphasis on real talk, not hype. We value authentic artistic connections, profound discussions, and have street level access to many of the world’s most innovative musicians.

It is that community of music makers and listeners that help to inspire and define Beat Studies.

As musicians and producers, we are constantly exploring our own potential within the limitless expression of electronic music and hip-hop. Beat Studies’ music tends to lean toward the influence of our distinguished predecessors in the genres of trip-hop, hip-hop, acid-jazz and chill-out.

Our Atlanta music collective dates back to 2003 when BJ Alden teamed up with Wallace Hardin III to study the works and process of pioneers like DJ Shadow and RJ D2. Armed with a pair of techniques and an MPC 2000XL, they began producing and releasing mixtape CD’s.Since then, dozens of our local collaborators, whom we respectfully refer to as Scholars of Distinction, have come together to make music on projects such as 16 Bars of Gold Volumes 1 & 2 and Don’t Mean A Thing. The collaborative effort continues today with a revitalized spirit and renewed sense of purpose.

Since its inception, Beat Studies has always been an outlet and an opportunity for artists to have a voice for change, enlightenment, self-empowerment and creativity. It is a movement. And like the fellow Beat before us, Jack Kerouac, we see it as no beginning or ending, it just is… with Beat Studies the welcoming collective of artists and producers that treats music as the art that it just is.

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About BJ Alden

Music journalist, composer and video producer. After five years between Los Angeles and Marquette, Michigan, BJ has found himself back in Atlanta, in the same studio, with the same collaborator from a decade earlier. This time older and wiser—and with better gear.